CommunityCouncil

Roof job at Cronin’s Head treatment plant costlier than expected

By Craig Westcott

Replacing the roof at the Cronin’s Head sewage treatment plant is going to cost a lot more than officials with the Town of CBS expected.

The budget for the job was originally set at $400,000. However, at council’s June 11 meeting, councillor-at-large Joshua Barrett moved a motion to increase that figure to $1.06 million.

“This is something that we have been chatting about for some time, and continue to prioritize,” Barrett said. “Unfortunately, despite the (size of) the bill, it’s one of the necessary evils that we need to address sooner rather than later.”

The Kelligrews plant treats most of the sewerage from CBS homes. There is a smaller treatment plant in Topsail that handles sewage from homes in the east end of town.

While the higher cost of replacing the roof at Cronin’s Head comes as a blow, council did hear some good news about its capital works costs. Prior to making the motion to increase the budget for the roofing job, Barrett made motions to reallocate money from projects that came in under budget last year. One of them was the upgrade of Minerals Road in Long Pond. It was budgeted to cost $2.5 million but came in at $1,805,000.

Most of the money for the project was supplied by the federal government’s Canada Community Building Fund. Ottawa borrows those dollars to support municipal capital works projects across the country.

The savings will be reallocated to the sewage plant roof replacement.

“We are very obviously pleased that this project came in under budget, but as the next couple of motions indicate, we are just reallocating some of those funds to other projects,” Barrett said.

“We’re definitely not giving it back, Councillor Barrett,” said Mayor Darrin Bent.

The Town is also switching the funding pots for some projects. Barrett moved that council shift $1.5 million from the federal government’s Canada Community Building Fund that had been allocated for road upgrades to other projects, which he did not specify. The road upgrades will be funded instead through a Multi-Year Capital Works allocation that is cost shared by the Town, the Province and Ottawa.

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